Skating on Thin Ice: A Comparison of Work Values and Job Satisfaction in CEE and EU Countries

The article presents a critical reading of opinion data on work and job values. Three cross-national surveys are used: the ISSP module on Work Orientations, the European Values Study, and the Households-Work-Flexibility survey. In the first part, some methodological problems are described and illustrated through previous research. In the second part, several specific results are displayed. In the third part, the focus is on job satisfaction. One of the main conclusions of the analysis is that although there are considerable differences between Central-Eastern Europe and the EU countries in a number of indicators, the value dimension exhibits large independence from personal work characteristics and the national economic regime. In conclusion, we discuss the problems involved in making generalizations out of these results and raise the question of the “true” change in values during the transition.